A painted bird
The birth of “Polish anti-Semitism”.
Alexander Shumansky – The text was published in the monthly “Forbidden History” on September 1, 2013.
“The Painted Bird”, a book attributed to Jerzy Kosinski (Joseph Lewinkoff, born June 14, 1933 in Lodz, d. May 3, 1991 in New York) – a Polish-American writer of Jewish origin, writing in English.
Eliot Weinberger in his book “The Karmic Trace” argues that Kosinski could not have been the author of “The Painted Bird” because his knowledge of the English language was still too weak at the time of writing the book.
Weinberger claims that Kosinski used texts written by several American editors who worked for him under lock and key in a New York hotel.
American poet and translator George Reevey is believed to be the author of “The Painted Bird”.
Kosinski studied under Prof. Józef Chalasinski at the University of Lodz, where he received a diploma at the faculties of political science and history.
After graduating from school, he became an assistant at the Institute of History and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1957, he went to the United States on a scholarship, where he stayed permanently.
In 1965, he received American citizenship. He was the recipient of Guggenheim (1967), Ford (1968) and American Academy (1970) fellowships. He is a graduate of Columbia University. He has taught at Yale, Princeton, Davenport, and Wesleyan universities. He is the recipient of the prestigious National Book Award (1969), National Institute of Arts and Letters (1970), Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger (1966) and many other awards.
Awarded by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1973, he was elected president of the Penn Club of America, a position he held for two terms.
He was president of the Oxford Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies.
The book “The Painted Bird”, which was published under his name, was a planned blow to the Poles by certain anti-Polish Jewish circles in the USA.
To sustain his burgeoning career, Kosinski accepted the anti-Polish attitude of his American, Jewish directors, who supported this anti-Polish lampoon.
Prof. Ivona Kyprian Pogonovsky, the pornographic nature of the book (naturalistic description of gang rape, sex with a goat and a dog, etc.
Kosinski's biographer, who writes about him: “Neither a Pole, nor a Jew, nor a fish, nor a bird, he perfectly mastered the modus vivendi of all his works, and especially The Painted Bird.”
Jewish American historians have invented his childhood life during the German occupation in the village of Dabrova Rzeczycka (a village in Poland located in the Radomisl nad Sanem Commune, Stałowa Wola County, Podkarpackie Voivodeship), where he actually lived, surrounded by “dark gardens. Dark Polish peasants, moreover, They were portrayed as gloomy, merciless, cruel, greedy, cunning people, degraded to “typical Polish degeneracy”.
Kosinski himself created many fictional biographies. Almost to the end of his life, he remained faithful to the principle of surrounding himself with true stories that, once told, often became facts.
Jerzy Nikodem Kosinski's (Joseph Levinkopf) “The Painted Bird” became the first anti-Polish attack of its kind, depicting the dramatic fate of a six-year-old (implicitly) Jewish boy during the war.
Based on the events described, it was initially believed that the book was based on autobiographical threads, which Kosinski did not deny.
In Poland, he was perceived as anti-Polish in various circles. In fact, it was the product of the anti-Polish fantasies of the appropriate circles in the United States, as he himself confirms in the introduction to later editions.
It is a stark presentation of the human cruelty and abominations the author attributes to the Polish villagers during the German occupation.
The theme of violence against ethnic minorities (Gypsies, Jews) is repeatedly mentioned in the novel. Central to the story of The Painted Bird is the notion of difference and alienation (often overt or superficial) – in a key scene, wild birds mutter to an individual of their species that humans have captured and painted in bright colors. .
However, it must be assumed that Kosinski's occupation biography is the basis of his literary image, and the supposed autobiographical novel “The Painted Bird” is seen worldwide as a testimony and document of the extermination of Polish Jews that is not realistic. A record of personal experience, but a surreal tale of the fate of a man hostile to the Poles.
The hero is a child, because childhood is naturally a state of (adult) alienation from the world, and in the eyes of a child, war always has an apocalyptic dimension.
It doesn't matter if the drama takes place in Poland or somewhere else; It doesn't matter if the boy walking in the symbolic, scary forest is a Jew, a gypsy, or just looks like them – what matters is his situation as an unhealthy, painted bird in a flock.
Jerzy Kosinski can be called a mythomaniac because myth played a fundamental role in his life.
Tadeusz Dolenga-Mostowicz's novel The Career of Nikodema Dysma (1932) was a breakthrough in Kosinski's life, and the attitude of the title character made him realize the goal he wanted to achieve in life and how to achieve it.
He also realized that America was the place where he could live his American dream of a fabulous career. Therefore, if a book can affect people's lives, then reading it in his youth certainly changed Kosinski's life – from now on, he shapes it so that he repeats the literary pattern and compares himself to the standard. Literary hero – Nicodemus Diz.
As it rarely happens, Kosinski's real-life literature, which was very demanding for him, turned out to be a good road sign that guaranteed a stunning success, a colorful, changing, unique and unbelievable star life, full of misunderstandings and contradictions.
However, there is another, darker side to Kosinski's coin. Well, the myth of Dismas, which gave birth to the American writer, brought him to the brink less than twenty years later and led to the collapse of his career.
Well, after a wave of attacks by journalists at the peak of his popularity, his third novel “Enough was enough” was accused of plagiarism… “The Career of Nikodema Dysma”.
On the night of May 3, 1991, Jerzy Kosinski called his best friend, Ursula Dudziak.
At the end of the conversation, he said: I will call you when I wake up. He mixed a large dose of sleeping pills with a large dose of alcohol, undressed, sat in the bathroom and put a plastic bag over his head for safety. In the morning, his wife Kiki found him dead.
However, the journalistic journey of the famous biographer Joanna Siedlecka and conversations with many witnesses showed that little Jurek did not wander alone in the Polish countryside, was not separated from his parents and did not lose his speech with the cruelty of a half-wild degenerate. Polish villagers.
On the contrary, he and his parents survived happily, thanks to the self-sacrifice and bravery of the Polish peasants living in the village of Dabrova Żeczycka, Tarnobrzeg Voivodeship.
It was these heroic Polish peasants from the village of Podkarpackie who risked their lives and those of their loved ones to save the boy's life and fulfill their Christian duty, led by the charismatic parish priest, Fr. Eugene Okon.
As a “reward”, these heroes were insulted to absolute darkness by Kosinski. “
Joanna Siedleka's Black Bird is a book about them, about their drama caused by the lies in Kosinski's book and the humiliation they suffered when he was everywhere but those who risked their lives for him during his triumphant visit to Poland. He still lived.
If Kosinski had confessed to them, the myth of the martyr would have been destroyed, because it turned out that he was not only a literary fraud who used the services of ghostwriters (ghosts who write books to order; their names do not appear on the cover. , only the name of a famous writer or politician).
Joanna Siedleka “The Black Bird” (from the author):
“…I did not go to America, I did not want to write about the undoubtedly dizzying career of Jerzy Kosinski, nor about his scandals and successes, which have already been described; An honor that has come to him.
I was only interested in his wartime childhood. A trip to the places where a few-year-old Jewish boy survived the occupation.
His traumatic experiences of those years, not America, were, in my opinion, the key and revelation of his essence. “Holocaust”, a complex, mysterious person. Obsessions, phobias, traumas and fears.
Masks and jokes. Shocking prose saturated with passion for evil. And finally – a surprising, suicide-caused death, among his not-so-clear motives, was perceived as a “dark childhood” that returned to him, the ghosts of the past, from which he could not free himself.
“He was a great liar – Janusz Glowacki wrote about him – but the demons, whose presence he constantly felt behind his back, were real. One night, in an apartment on 57th Street, they gathered in a tight circle… I think the childhood years described in “The Painted Bird” also influenced the decision to commit suicide.
Even if it is not as cruel as it is described in the novel… argued Eva Hoffman, a Polish-Canadian writer, author of a book about the adaptation of Polish immigrants in the United States.
. Dark Childhood was also the key to The Painted Bird, considered a masterpiece of Shoah literature, its literary document.
People were wondering: is the author telling his own story? After all, he was a Jewish child who survived the “age of ovens”.
Especially since the official “biographies” of the chapters published in the American Literary Encyclopedias provided facts that fit the story of the boy from “The Painted Bird.”
“Painted bird” is a work of art. Kosinski borrowed horrors from other descriptions or invented them.
In “The Painted Bird” he presented these horrors as his own experience, while depicting the backwardness, ignorance and cruelty of the Polish peasants who saved his life.
In recent years, he lived in New York in a two-room apartment with his American wife, who did not speak Polish.
Apparently, they lived separately – Kosinski was friends with singer Ursula Dudziak. He has been writing a book for the past seven years, but it was not accepted by publishers.
Discovered literary plagiarism ended his literary career, he lost his membership in the American PEN Club and was left penniless.
Kosinski's suicide was probably caused by his literary decline and financial shortcomings, and not by remorse and regret of his moral attitude, as some authors believe…”
“The Painted Bird” was the first in literature to accuse the Poles of atrocities against Jews and thus of complicity in the Holocaust and ignited a global anti-Polish campaign.
The anti-Polish campaign has unfortunately spilled over into Poland with irresponsible attacks, turning Poles into anti-Semitic murderers.
Alexander Shumansky
The text was published in the monthly “Forbidden History” on September 1, 2013.
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerzy_Kosi%C5%84ski
http://www.culture.pl/baza-film-pelna-tresc/-/eo_event_asset_publisher/e…
http://blogopinia24.pl/polityka/837-pokosie-malowany-ptaka
http://www.rodaknet.com/rp_szumanski_113.htm
http://aleksanderszumanski.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=…